How To Fall In Love With Strangers

Picture the two of you together doing something innocuous. Just as a test. Mowing the lawn together, maybe. Holding hands in your dream kitchen. Tearfully putting down an old and beloved dog the two of you adopted together. Just as a test. How’s it look? It looks good, doesn’t it?

Okay, keep not making eye contact. Eventually they’ll get the hint and come ask you out.

Move the straw in your drink. At no point allow the straw in your drink to remain stationary. If the straw stays still for even a moment, they’ll leave and you’ll never see them again.

Think very hard at them about how much you like them. Like in The Secret. The room’s kind of noisy, but they should be able to pick up on your brainwaves eventually.

Look away, for good measure.

What if they left you? What if you were together for years and years, and then they left you, and you were alone in the house you’d built together with nothing but memories and whatever else people are left with when other people leave them?

You’d leave first, if it came to that, you decide. Not that it will. But if it did.

Someday the two of you will be old, and you’ll be eating sandwiches together, and one of you will say, “Is there lettuce in this?” and you’ll both peer into the interior of the sandwich, and this will either be very comforting or very sad.

What if the two of you aren’t compatible in bed? What if they want you to do something you hate? Or worse, something that you don’t hate but just leaves you entirely cold? You’d do it for them, you decide. You’d do it for love. The two of you would work through it together.

Whoever they’re talking to just said something that made them laugh. You love that laugh. You’ve always loved that laugh.

Your parents are getting older and will die someday. That isn’t related, exactly, but you’re still thinking about it in a way that makes you depressed.

Are they looking? Don’t look, but are they looking? Or are they gone? They’re gone.

They’ll be back. You thought pretty hard at them earlier and moved that straw a lot. They’ll be back, and you’ll be ready. You’ll be ready for love, and eye contact, and everything.